


Applied Theology

by Sacrosanctimonious



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent, The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Forgive Me, Gen, for ssss that is, we arent wasp factorying in here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24112339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sacrosanctimonious/pseuds/Sacrosanctimonious
Summary: Contact checks back up on Earth and finds the course of history thrown wildly off the beaten path. Sma is irritated.(Dead, but if you find it amusing you can interpret that cliffhanger as "and then they all died.")
Comments: 19
Kudos: 21





	1. Shipboard

The General Contact Unit _Delectably Delirious_ hovers some ten thousand kilometres above the surface of the planet below, a jewel fixed against the canvas of night surrounding it. From the planet itself it would be too tiny and dark to see even if it wasn’t wrapped in layers of stealth and deflection, cloaking it from unwanted eyes. If it were to be seen, it would appear to be nothing so much as a collection of silvery ovoids, arranged with no apparent structure or logic, interlaced with gossamer-thin strands of light, and embedded in a luminescent field of light. It certainly wouldn’t be identifiable by those below as a spacecraft, let alone one inhabited primarily by something not entirely unlike humanity. 

If an observer could see past the dancing strands of silver and the mirror-finish ovoids, past the interlocking fields of light and dark that surround and envelop them, they would see layers of machinery and artifice, complexity on every scale, fractal patterns of metal and glass and other, greater things, forming a construct too vast to take in. If they could see past even this tapestry of engineering, then they might see Diziet Sma waking up.

Sma’s not in the best mood as she wakes up on account of a particularly bad hangover and a bleary-eyed waking. The her of a century ago would have asked her why she tolerates these indignities and doesn’t just flush the alcohol out of her system, but she’s learnt some things since then. As she gets out of the archaic and jarringly uncomfortable bed, she’s only barely able to keep herself from falling flat on her face-the ship’d disabled gravity last night and the realisation only kicks in at the last moment. She needs a shower, a shave and some godsdamned _silence_ . Her crew(mates? God, she’s been doing this for decades and she still doesn’t know what to call her fellow Contactees) haven’t been very obliging, to say the least. Lyr’s been partying for the last one hundred and eight hours, and has no intention of stopping. Jand wanders around the ship, high off his ass as always, knocking on doors at random intervals. She doesn’t even want to think what the First Mate’s been doing this time. She would just put some noise-cancelling on her room, but it’s _retro week_ , and apparently this means she has to endure nonsense from her compatriots or be snubbed at every occasion in this tiny community.

After she’s done with her shower, as she walks out of her room and into the halls leading to the secondary meeting place/canteen she calls out to the air, refusing to let her mood be improved by the tasteful and generally very well-done decor of the halls or the pleasant music she can somehow hear over Lyr’s “thrash metal.”

“Ship, talk to me.” she says, hoping for some reprieve from the ache in her skull.

The voice emerges from all around her, smooth, quiet and androgynous. She keeps walking towards the canteen.

“I hear Jand’s pet spider died last night when she stepped on it?”

Sma doesn’t know whether this is the ship’s idea of a joke, or-

“I’m being serious.”

Sma groans, knowing that Jand will be unreasonably irritated about this for pretty much the duration of the mission.

“I really don’t want to deal with this right now. Can we talk shop? There are ships out there we can contact, right? A colony on the-the red one, you know what I mean, right?”

“Mars.”

She’s in the canteen now, seating herself as she speaks.

“Yes. Right. There’s a colony on Mars by now. Can we hail them, declare that we come in peace, something? I really don’t want to spend my time here thinking about Jand’s _fucking_ spider.”

“Mm. I had intended to talk about this when you were all gathered for the mission statement later, but since you asked, no. There isn’t a colony. There aren’t spaceships. There’s very little indeed.”

Sma frowns, complaints about unruly crew forgotten. This sounds Important, and the part of her mind that deals with serious business has come to the forefront.

“How? We visited them last, what, a hundred and thirty years ago? They were up to figuring out nukes and rocketry back then, I remember that. Are you telling me they’ve spent so much time gazing at their own navels they’ve just sat there for a century?”

“Not quite. I noticed this when we were making final approach, actually. I monitored realspace transmissions as we were coming in, catching myself up on history and so forth. Transmissions continue as normal-war, strife, all the rest-for forty years after we left. After that point they drop off exponentially. And- this next part will be better if I just show you, actually. Look to the east wall?”

Sma obliges, looking at what was previously an enormous painting that covered the entire surface, but which is now perfectly transparent glass. On the other side, she can see the world they’re here to survey. She remembers the last time she was here, it looked like a blue-and-white marble, hanging in infinity. Not a particularly rare look for habitable worlds, but pretty nonetheless. Now, she can see only darkness. She’s looking at the nightside of this world, but something is wrong. Her eyes don’t widen, she’s a Special Circumstances agent in exile, more or less, but it’s clear she’s surprised.

“Where are all the lights? We saw lights covering the surface last time, typical pre-space stuff. Did they all, what just vanish underground? Some sort of bunkering-up thing? Grief, did they get hit by a meteor and just get wiped off the surface?”

“Look to the poles.”

She does, remembering the shrinking ice caps she’d been told of last time. Is the mind hinting that they had something to do with this, or- no, that’s not it, she’s overthinking it. There, near the northern pole, she can see tiny strings of light, isolated, dim and furtive.

“So, what? Something happened that killed _almost_ all of them, or turned out the power across the planet, or whatever?”

She clicks her tongue.

“Ship, I’m getting tired of playing detective here. Tell me what happened to this place.”

The smugness in the ship’s voice is almost audible as it answers.

“Fine. I’m still gathering details and surveying the make-up of the regions below, but what I’ve gathered so far is that ninety years ago, some sort of pathogen-which I heavily suspect was at least somewhat unnatural in origin or propagation-spreads rapidly throughout the planet. The pathogen infects both the dominant species and object of our survey, “humanity,” and all other warm-blooded lifeforms, bar one. The plague has a one hundred percent lethality among those infected and within a few months the population of almost six billion has been whittled down to only a few dozen million globally. 

Individuals who either naturally possess immunity or have successfully implemented quarantine against both animals and humans survive this first wave. It becomes apparent that the plague possesses another aspect: of those that are infected, a small proportion mutate and transform rather than dying, becoming animalistic and murderous. These creatures do not age, do not need to eat and predate exclusively on the uninfected. This, combined with famine and the resurgence of other diseases due to the collapse of pharmaceutical manufacturing, cut the survivors down to just over a million people by the time we arrived. 

Survivor groups are primarily located in areas that are either totally isolated from mainland areas and have strong quarantine measures and coastal defence, or in areas with harsh climates and terrain that make defense from these creatures easier. This means the vast majority of survivors are clustered by the poles. Technology regressed significantly in the aftermath, but ninety years of salvage and rebuilding have allowed survivors to return to almost pre-plague technology and infrastructure.”

The ship pauses. Probably for effect, knowing it.

“Any questions?”

Sma sighs, head having found its way to her hands over the course of this lecture. 

“Yes. So many questions. But they can wait until later. For now, what’s the word from the committee or whatever it is that oversees this region on interference and so on?”

“Well,” replies the ship, “strictly speaking I as an independent entity have full right to decide my own course of action regardless of the advisory committee’s conclusions, and indeed if they were to impugn my motivations I would protest in the most extreme terms. That being said, word is that this is now an intervention. Sma, you are officially back in action.”

Sma lets herself pitch forwards and slam down into the seat behind her, head in her hands.

____________________________________________________________________________

They meet a little later in the primary canteen/viewing area/party venue a few hours later, the whole crew, all six of them. They’ve been given time to come down off of or get back up from whatever may or may not have ailed them earlier in the morning. The walls of the room, a twenty-metre open space whose ceiling is decorated with incongruous architectural flourishes, are transparent, showing the shining blue seas and white clouds of Earth on one side and the unbounded voids of space on the other.

Lyr’s stopped partying by and with himself, letting the simulacra of alternate hims, hers and thems fade away, and is now fully in the Professional mindset. He only pauses occasionally to brush his eye-searingly bright purple hair over his scalp or check how he looks in his mirrorfield. Such indiscretion is, Sma knows, typical of Contact agents, who are not held to the standards of SC(and with good reason.)

Jand’s here with all eleven of her appendages, crossing her arms in sets across her chest. She cares about those arms almost as she cares about the thrice-damned spider, and her utter refusal to part with them thankfully keeps her from going planetside as Sma surely will. She still looks completely wasted, her unfairly pretty frown twisting as her face spasms in reaction to unseen hallucinatory stimuli. This is standard fare for her, and Sma doesn’t question it.

She refuses to pay attention to HeLeyn, an Ishlorsinami crewmember, one of the only one of their kind Sma had ever met, and her latest ex. Their incredible height makes them an unlikely pick for field ops, which is probably for the best. She hopes this doesn’t prove to be a hindrance to the mission. 

The Idiran in the room is, of course, an actual Idiran named Kasitendra. Covered in chitinous tissue, near three metres tall, with three legs thicker than most peoples’ torsos and possessed of an inhuman strength, he’s likely to be shot on sight by the terrified natives below if they catch sight of him. Absolutely a no-go for the field.

Lastly, of course, is the First Mate. She doesn’t know what he’s called, or even what he looks like, thanks to the bandanna and goggles he keeps across his face at all times. He refuses to identify himself except as the First Mate, speaks only through written glyphs on his tablet, and is generally an enormous nuisance. Sma still isn’t sure he isn’t some sort of long-term prank by the ship, an avatoid that it’s using to screw with them all. She’s not even sure what she’d prefer be the case. She _does_ know that Lyr refuses to look at him at all, presumably out of petty spite. Shipboard romances were unstable at the best of times.

They’ve been standing more or less in place, making small talk, for a few minutes, awaiting the announcement the resident ship Mind promised it would make. Its voice cuts through the idle chatter cleanly and effortlessly.

“Crew,” it begins, “we have a plan.”

The six all look to the planet-facing window, in front of which a holographic woman, wearing a suit and a thin silver tiara, has appeared. Behind it, holographic displays appear over the planet, highlighting regions which Sma recognises as inhabited. She can see Jand snap to attention, all signs of the various hallucinogens she’d consumed vanishing as her body negates the effect.

“The advisory has recommended us to intervene on the world you now see below us. This planet has been subject to a disaster of appalling magnitude and near-fatal effect. I have discussed privately with all of you the situation on the world below. You understand the severity of their situation; you know that they have been subject to a biotechnological attack by what is very likely an Involved’s cast-off weapon. Your task, either as planetside agents or as coordinators within my fields, is to work with me to aid the peoples of the world below. Diziet Sma, you have been chosen to enter the field near the northern region, in the “Nordic Council” area. First Mate, Lyr, your task is to enter the southern regions, the “Pacific Commonwealth”. HeLeyn, Jand, Kasi, you’ll stay up here for observation, analysis, and so on. Everyone got that?”

Sma nods sharply. Nobody else responds, except Kasi, who grunts. She sighs internally.

“Our objective is to covertly feed technologies and strategies to the natives in order to help them combat the threat of the infected entities below, as well as using our intelligence capabilities to provide them with tactical information critical to their retaking of their homeworld. Technology we reveal is to be no more advanced than a projected Level 5 on the Galactic Council’s Civilisational Development Schema, and we are under no circumstances to reveal our nature to the natives. Our secondary mission is to allow various survivor groups of natives to make contact with each other, as each isolated group, unable to communicate with the others, has come to think that they are alone on the planet. This is expected to be a long-term, large-scale intervention, and the current staff-that is to say, us-are expected to be supplemented and eventually replaced by more specialised or experienced Contact personnel.”

Sma lets her mouth quirk up a little.

“Except you, Sma. Being ex-SC means a little more than being able to get all the girls, I’m sorry to say.”

Wonderful.

“We will be breaking now, because I can see you all fidgeting at having been made to stand still and stay silent for so long. When you get back, bring some refreshments, take a seat, and get your game faces on. We’ll be having our in-depth briefing after the break. Ten minutes.”

Sma appreciates the chance to sit down and relax for a few minutes before the serious briefing, where they will each receive detailed mission descriptions and backstories for planetside. She gestures at the floor and a sumptuous seat rises, which she drops gratefully into. She’s not really in the mood for Retro Week, knowing that she’ll be stuck down on that medieval mudball for months after this. At least she has a chance to relax in the now, though.

She hears a slight whooshing sound next to her as another chair rises from the ground, and the soft thump of a light form slumping down onto it. She feels like crying. 

“You know what happened last night? Somebody stepped on my _spider!_ ”

____________________________________________________________________________

Sma slots into the drop-pod snugly and without any discomfort. Like much of the Culture, almost as much effort and design has gone into the ergonomical nature of the pod as has gone into not making it look designed or artificial. The contradictory and prideful impulses of Minds have always confused Sma.

The pod is a little taller and wider than her, just enough so that she can lie/stand inside with her arms crossed without any discomfort. From where she’s lying she can just barely see the three who aren’t going planetside standing in a loose group, talking to each other. The pod’s doors close in front of her, whisper-quiet. The opaque surface quickly lights up with symbols and glyphs. Normally, this would all be routed through her neural lace, except that Sma, being the eccentric among people that she is, does not actually have one. She selects the map view from the screen, and is given a view of the vast orb beneath her, and of their ship, a tiny speck suspended above, with its triplicate cargo, angels descending from the heavens. As she takes in her trajectory and goes over the details of her identity, Kasi-it can be nobody else, with that rumbling tone loud enough to penetrate the pod’s shielding-calls out to her.

“Get me a souvenir!” he cries.

Lyr’s pod is detaching as she watches, accelerating away from the ship towards the world beneath. From what she knows, she doubts the people below have the time, manpower, resources or inclination to survey the stars, but to be on the safe side each pod is cloaked in layers of shielding to keep it from prying eyes. First Mate follows her, blazing a trail across the skies of an alien world. She closes her own eyes at the pod’s prompting, and feels foam spray across her body, filling the space between the walls and her body. It’s unlikely this will do anything at all-the inertial dampeners keep passengers safe almost every time-but strength in depth is and always will be the motto of the Culture. She can see the same displays she saw on the pod walls appear on the insides of her own eyelids. There’s a moment of weightlessness as the clamps on the pod come undone and she’s set free, ready to be launched down to her destination-

And then the display flickers, and she hears a deep rumbling as she’s shaken by some unknown force. This isn’t launch. Launch in Culture craft is smooth and almost imperceptible without prior notice. Something is affecting the ship. The rumbling continues, deep and quiet, running through the marrow of her very bones. She has no idea what’s happening-Culture ships do not rumble or flicker their lights. If they were being attacked, she would know. This is something else.

Finally, the Mind speaks to her, in that perfect, unaffected tone that she knows Minds the galaxy over use when they are _truly_ afraid.

“Something just shoved the ship,” it states calmly, “through hyperspace. We’re moving on a four-dimensional trajectory to nowhere in particular. My fields are flickering like crazy and my sensors are giving nonsensical results. My displacement systems are down and I can’t contact Lyr or First Mate. I have no idea what is happening.”

The rumbling and flickering of subdermal displays continues for some time as Sma sits, not scared so much as awed, awed at the sheer scale and power and _panache_ of something that would dare to smite a General Contact Unit like it were nothing more than an insect. In all her time in the Culture, as Contact and even as Special Circumstances, she has only once come across someone or something who could outplay a Culture Mind, and even _he_ couldn’t pull this off.

“What,” she says as she finally comprehends the severity of her situation, “the _fuck_ is going on here?”

The reply comes almost instantly, cool and clinical.

“I believe I’m being targeted by something equiv-tech or higher, and _very_ determined. It occurs to me that Special Circumstances proper might be needed here, Sma.”

There’s a moment where time seems to stand still. Every sense is emptied, every thought is gone. There is only Sma, and the ship, and the endless expanse of _not_ that surrounds and consumes her, a catacomb of unbeing whose tombs hold innumerable corpses. She can feel herself, all of herself, every atom of her body and all their interactions, the minutiae of every field and flux line as it twists and ripples through spacetime.

Then the moment ends, and she is standing above a sun. The light should be blazing and all-consuming. Instead, it is a dim red, washing across her body, warming her. She’s sitting by a hearth, warm and safe with her parents. She’s walking through a snowy forest, eyes cat-quick, looking for beasts and worse. She’s on a field on a cold windswept plain, tending to sheep. She’s flying alongside a swan, looking to her rear as an owl flies desperately behind her. She’s sailing the seas, sword in hand, roaring battle-cries. She’s cooking a simple meal while her comrades laugh behind her.

She does not have a body. She is simply a presence, hanging in space. In front of her, plasma dances and writhes. A voice emerges, omnipresent, all-encompassing. It speaks, and she listens.

“DIZIET EMBLESS SMA” speaks the voice, beating an endless fractal tattoo into her ears.

Now she looks upon Earth. She sees fields of endless green, and cities aflame. She sees rot and blight, and shadows cast. She sees ossuaries and mortuaries, a thousand monuments to the foregone. The sky is clear and empty, the sun bright and sharp like an apple in autumn. Oceans churn and froth and spew forth the dead. Mountains writhe as tendons pull against bone to reach unseen summits. There is no end to the places she will never live to see.

“BE WARNED. THERE WAS DEATH HERE. THERE IS DEATH HERE. THERE WILL BE DEATH HERE.”

The voice reverberates through her body, filling her mind, ordering, demanding, commanding-

And she’s back in the pod. The rumbling has stopped. The display lurking within her eyelids shows that Lyr has landed on the surface, and First Mate is close behind.

There’s an extended pause.

“Sma, I’ve just received a transmission. It was in English. You should listen to this.”

“I think,” says Sma, wide-eyed, “I know what it says.”


	2. Planetside

Reynir Árnason is, frankly, having the time of his life. The past few months have been a whirlwind of activity in what (according to his parents) should have been a still and measured life of shepherding and contemplation atop Icelandic hills. His parents still haven’t totally forgiven him for his disappearance three months ago, but their relief at his returning-and no small amount of pride at his achievements, after he got around to describing them-outweighed and still outweighs their anger. Nonetheless, it’s been long enough since he came back that they feel comfortable lecturing him about what he did wrong. Of course, they don’t get much in the way of opportunities nowadays, Reynir having been fortunate enough after the events of The Expedition (that’s how he thinks of it, Capital T and E, the one and only) to be accepted into the prestigious Seiður school, the most successful (and only) school of magic in the Known World, various Finnish tutorials notwithstanding. His parents only really berate him these days by letter, a thing he might once have regretted, but these days finds refreshingly liberating. His experience at the school itself overwhelmed him in its first few days, although he’s now settling into a rhythm and slowly coming to terms with his new life.

There’s no getting over the fact that the school is-as a fellow student colourfully put it- “fucking enormous.” With a faculty of a full thirty mages and almost five hundred students studying, it’s easily the largest place of study he’s ever seen, or even heard of. He supposes Reykjavik University has more people, and perhaps whatever they call the school at Mora, but to him, who until recently thought “large” meant the town upriver with a full three hundred people, the enormity of the place still stuns him today. Its grounds are almost ten square kilometres of residential area, lecture theatre, shooting range and natural landscape. Located as it is far out from any other settlements, with its own supply of food and even a small community of farmers who seem to provide food exclusively to the school, there aren’t any real boundaries on the grounds, even if the wards theoretically provide limits. A long and winding road curls along the hills to Reykjavik, only some tens of kilometres away, but still far enough that the air is crisp and clean despite all the people- Reynir’s ideal environment.

He’s outside what might strictly be called the bounds of the school right now, on one of his classic head-clearing walks. It’s a cool autumn evening, just enough to merit a thick woolen overcoat over his regular jacket. The sky’s clear and cloudless, the sun shining with a clear white light. He’s on his way back, using the decrepit Old World road. The feeling of age here sends shivers up his back, as if he can almost feel the spirits of the dead that walked here before him. On one hand, he knows better now than to dismiss his intuitions, but on the other, this place has been full of mages for almost sixty years, and there’s no way the main route in and out of Seiður hasn’t been cleared of any haunting dead long ago (even neglecting that this is Iceland, the bulwark of humanity, whose shores the Rash never reached). It’s probably, he has to admit to himself, just nerves. Ever since the vaunted Expedition, places like these- where the Old World’s left its mark- scare him more than a little. They remind him of those vast and endless buildings, those cold cities filled with nothing but the dead. The way those places never seemed to end, the infinite urban jungle, may have just been the scariest thing he’d ever seen. Even Reykjavik itself had had him a little on his toes thanks to the uncanny resemblance it had to the Silent World, though the chatter of living voices stood in for the creeping whispers of the dead. He’ll stick to quaint little villages with three-digit populations and a good decent dirt road, thank you very much.

The sound of footfalls behind him startles him from his reverie, and it’s all he can do to suppress quickly-developed reflexes that scream at him to reach for a weapon he doesn't wear these days (why should he, in quarantined and secured Iceland?) He turns around to see a tall dark-skinned lady in heavy travelling gear approaching him, heavy rucksack slung across her back, with an inquisitive expression clear on her face. He blinks once, confused, before remembering that new arrivals are just coming in for this season-mages being too rare to wait a full year to train them-and walks to her extending a hand. As he approaches she shakes his hand with gusto, wearing a smile. He feels obliged to try and help her out.

“Sorry, are you looking for Seiður? It’s just a little down the road that way. Where did you come from? You’re quite early, you know, arrivals this season normally start a few weeks later, but whatever. I guess people are quite enthusiastic about coming here. I know I was pretty excited when I got the letter, even if my mother was sad she wouldn’t get to see me for a while.”

The woman looks up at him quizzically and he kicks himself mentally (and tries it physically, before stumbling and regretting it), realising he’s rambling. He also notes that she could be Norweigian, understanding none of this, which would certainly explain her dark skin and the weirdly hair that she has, as well as her odd timing. Sigrun didn’t look anything like this, but foreigners could be a weird bunch. Best to check. 

“Sorry,” he says, gesticulating wildly in the hopes he can overcome the language barrier, “Do you understand me?” He points at her and himself appropriately. “Do...you-”

“Yes, I understand you.” She sighs. “I just got lost on the way here. Thanks for the advice.”

Reynir can feel himself blushing. Her Icelandic is perfectly unaccented, authentic rural stuff, no Reykjavik burr. He’s totally misjudged the situation.

“Sorry, I thought you might be Norweigian. What with your timing, and all.” He can’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

“If I were Norweigian, wouldn’t I learn Icelandic before coming here?” Reynir realises that that is indeed a fairly obvious conclusion, that his experience with foreign languages is in the minority, and that he is very stupid.

“I thought I would get so lost it’d take me the extra week to get back on track, honestly.”

Thankfully she doesn’t seem to want to dwell on his nonsense. She laughs, quiet and amused in a way that transcends her current situation. “I almost did, too. If I hadn’t taken that turn way back then, I’d probably have died, and they’d have never found my bones.” 

“Haha! I can certainly relate. You know, I almost got lost in the school itself, actually, I felt so stupid-” He cuts himself off, rambling again as he is. He should probably just shut up and let her on her way, and indeed, she’s turning away even now, but before he can stop himself he’s blurting out, “I like your hair! It’s really, um, curly. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

She turns, eyebrow raised at him, head tilted slightly. He can’t quite describe what exactly it is that she’s projecting at him with that glare, but whatever it is it makes cringe inside, almost wincing and recoiling visibly. There’s a silence that’s a little too long to be just awkward.

“...Thanks.” She says finally, tone of voice making it clear that if he ever repeats that she will do awful things to him. “What’s your name?”

“You really want to know?” asks Reynir, before he realises that he should not make a habit of ticking off random mages he meets on the road.

She shrugs. “Pays to know names.”

“Reynir,” he says, hand held out in front of him, “Reynir Árnason.”

“Kristin Marensdottir.” she answers simply, before turning away for the last time and setting off on the two-mile walk down the road to Seiður. 

...Is what he stands there thinking to himself before realising that’s where he, himself is heading, and quickly rushes after her, determined to make up for the travesty of the last two minutes.

____________________________________________________________________________

“So the wards, they prevent the… spirits from entering?”

Kristin says the word spirit with a curious bent, as if she can’t quite get her head around it. Perhaps she is foreign, after all.

“Yep!” replies Reynir eagerly, happy to explain the wondrous magics of Seiður, the layered wards that protect Iceland’s greatest. It has been the policy of the government since time immemorial (or, well, the last thirty years) to mandate military service for mages of all stripes, and the defenses of the academy protect what is arguably the nation’s greatest asset. They encircle the entire grounds, and are the only thing that really give the otherwise nonexistent edges of the academy any meaning.

Not that Reynir knows much about things like assets and logistics and the necessity of mages in the military, being a civilian despite all his experiences. All he knows is that the people on top seem to care a whole lot about him and his friends, a gesture he hopes to repay one day with his service.

There isn’t really any need for such, this far from the coast. It has been a project of the military for decades to ward the entire coastline, keeping back sea-beasts and further securing the nation, and frankly this far inland, far from the haunting whispers of the dead and the power of the rare but terrifying turned mage, the whole affair is as much a show of power as anything else.

They’re closing in on the dorms now, a block of old log cabins purpose-built some thirty years ago, that house pretty much the entire body of students. They’re cold in the winter and hot in the summer, Iceland’s government not having had to build such large scale accommodation since the Rash until they were constructed, and making a dogs’ dinner of it. The dormitories are simultaneously sprawling and cramped, winding and not very-well-put-together paths tracing their way across the dense block of buildings.

Reynir supposes he ought to take her to Admissions, where she’ll be officially inducted into the academy and given her lodgings. He suspects he knows where she’ll be, seeing as how his dorm is perhaps the only one with two free spaces in the entire school, a luxury that he and his roommate have been crowing over perhaps a bit too loudly. She’s the first of the new arrivals for this spring, and thus earns the dubious honour of having to live with Reynir for the next term, until rooms are shuffled.

In the meanwhile, she quizzes Reynir on the customs and traditions of Seiður, seeming more put off with every word. Reynir is surprised by how little she knows, and might perhaps be insulted by the way she reacts to some of the things he says, if he wasn’t-well-Reynir. She knows little about the nature of magic for one who’s come to study it, even at one point asking what, precisely, galdstrafir are. This is enough to merit a reaction even from eternally trusting Reynir, who raises an eyebrow at her, until she clarifies that of course she knows what the basis of all Icelandic magic is, and her question is more of a theological nature. Why, she asks, do the Gods choose to channel their power through runes and carvings? Do they find them pleasing?

It’s not a question Reynir, not even a year through the course, is really equipped to answer, but he tries anyway, filling in his lack of knowledge with anecdotes of all the bizarre goings on that he witnessed, as evidence that the Gods sometimes act in odd ways. Kristin seems perhaps a little disappointed by that, but nods placidly.

“So, what do we study?”

He’s surprised it took her this long to ask that most basic of questions, but then he supposes she’s more than a little in awe of it all, for all that she projects a calm demeanour. Reynir, who had seen the bustling metropolis of Reykjavik and wandered the dead streets of the megacity Copenhagen, had found it more than a little intimidating. It makes sense that this woman, who has probably never been more than twenty miles from her hometown until now, would find the immensity of the place a bit much. He’s happy to answer though.

“Oh, all the basics, really. Runecraft, divination, traversing the dream-sea, hunting, shooting. What you’ll need on the outside.”

“The dream-sea?”

Reynir smiles. This had been something a lot of mages were surprised to learn, although of course he had discovered his own talent in rather different circumstances.

“Yes, it is real. That place you see at night, the water, the boats or forests or what-have-you. It’s all real, and all part of the dream. We all go there when we sleep.”

She nods gravely, eyes thoughtful.

He frowns, remembering the baleful glare he’d seen from the mists, and the shapes shifting deep below him in the abyss.

“Don’t ever step out of your space, though. The place where you feel safe. Not until you’re older.”

It’s a clumsy warning from a clumsy man. Reynir knows full well that she’s likely older than him, he having discovered his own talent at a much younger age than most Icelanders.

She looks back up, frowning.

“You said we learn hunting and shooting? What use is that for a...mage?”

Reynir once again wonders if there isn’t perhaps some language barrier here.

“Of course we do! I mean, what would be the point of all the fancy magic if you can’t kill a troll? Sure, the best mages can fight trolls with just their runes, but those are some pretty high hopes, and that’s a risky life to live. If you can’t fight for yourself, you’re not exactly going to be much use in the military, are you?”

“The military?!” hisses Kristin, head snapping around so she can look him straight in the eyes. This time, Reynir is completely lost for words, even as he quails under her furious glare.

“I mean...yes? What did you think you were here for? This is Seiður, the only mage training school in the world, and you didn’t realise that you were here to serve. Good Gods, who recruited you, and where from? That’s some serious neglect. Have you been forced into joining?”  
Reynir whispers the words discreetly, thanking Freyja that they were still far enough from the dorms that nobody could hear him even at this volume. Kristin only sighs in response, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes, before stumbling and almost falling face first, the weight of her back sending her forward. She retakes her balance with a fluid grace that almost makes up for her misstep. Almost.

She laughs first, and seeing that, Reynir can’t help himself, and chuckles along with her. 

“No,” she says, “I haven’t been forced. Just the reality of things finally sinking in, I suppose. I always thought of the mages as separate from the military. I never realised I’d actually have an opportunity to go out there, and fight alongside our soldiers, keeping back the trolls.”

“You want to work with the Cleansers?”

“The who?”

This Reynir can understand. Though the rest of the Known World had been struggling to retake their lost lands and beat back the trolls for all living memory, forging themselves into warriors against the Rash in the process, the Icelandic had lived a pastoral life, raising sheep and thinking not of the outside world, except perhaps in nightmares. Few know much of it, even now, especially in the further-out hamlets from the capital, which Kristin is evidently from.

“The Cleansers burn back the infected lands and the troll nests, retaking the Silent World bit by bit for us. One day it’ll all be gone, and we’ll have the world back.” It’s a familiar phrase, the oath that the Cleanser recruitment ads often parade about. It’s not a popular view in Iceland, born of almost a century of isolation, but Reynir has had enough tantalising glimpses of the world to want more.

Kristin only nods, dark eyes turned forward to the Admissions office that they both now stand in front of. 

“Well,” she says gloomily, “To a good year.”

She steps into the office.

____________________________________________________________________________

It is to precisely nobody’s surprise when Kristin arrives at the gun range while Reynir is practising later that day to announce that they are rooming together. 

He’s firing at the targets they keep moving some thirty metres away, bags of rocks kept moving using motive runes. With their large misshapen profiles and their surprising speed, they make a pretty good imitation troll. Thirty metres is a pathetic distance to be having trouble shooting as Reynir is, but in the Silent World it’s inadvisable to take a shot unless it’s absolutely necessary, and if it is, it’s likely the infected would be far closer than that. At any rate, a good mage relies on their unit to engage, primarily detecting and avoiding giants and seeking nests rather than engaging in combat.

Nonetheless, the fact he misses half his shots at such a tiny distance is more than a little embarrassing to Reynir. He’s not exactly practised with the rifle, even now, but it galls him to waste so much ammo when the soldiers in the Silent World often find their own lacking. The staff at the school insist that any amount of wasted ammo is worth it to keep one of their mages alive a moment longer when the time finally comes in battle. He can’t help but feel like a bit of a burden compared to those around him. It’s an irrational reaction, and of course he recognises that-he’s one of the most talented mages here, especially considering his age and how far he is through the course. 

He’s just managed to score a dead-on hit on one of the targets, and smiles proudly to himself momentarily, when he feels a touch on his back. He jumps, and almost turns around with the weapon in hand before remembering himself. It is, of course, Kristin. They can’t speak in the range with their ear protection on-which the academy mandates, preferring that their mages don’t come away from their training with damaged hearing-and so the two of them walk out and past the designated safe distance for ear protectors before trying to do so. They’re still close enough that the intermittent and predictable cracks of gunfire mar the otherwise peaceful silence of the grounds. The range is located pretty much as far from the dorms as possible, for the sake of the students’ sanity, but this close it’s still plenty loud.

“I got told I’m rooming with you,” says Kristin, breaking the silence easily.

“Makes sense,” he replies, “I guess I was a bit too loud about how much room we had in my dorm. I’ll show you to it later, but for now I guess you’ve got to start up with classes.”

“Hm. They said I should pretty much just stick with you for the first few weeks and see what I like and what I can do before picking my own classes. They also told me you could be reliably found down here at this time of the day. I take it these are the firearm training sessions they give you?”

“Firearms training is pretty much just an introduction to how to use a gun. Which end goes where, what bit to pull to make it go bang, that sort of stuff.” He laughs, scratching the back of his head. “I’m not proud to admit I didn’t know that guns needed ammo or, you know, reloading, not six months back. Anyway, after those first few hours they pretty much set you loose. The staff mandate a certain number of hours at the range a week, to be arranged as you will. There’s no curfew or anything stupid like that, so you can shoot all through the night if you want to. Though it does get a bit hard to see the targets like that. Suppose it’s like a real engagement in that way, can’t really guarantee that you’ll have perfect conditions, and…”

Reynir hisses to himself again in irritation. He’s babbling again, going on far too much about something so tiny to Kristin. Her expression is one of serene calm, and she seems to be hanging off of his every word, but it’s clear she really just wants him to shut up. He has to stop behaving like that.

“Sorry. Anyway, come in with me and I’ll show you the ropes. Ever handled a gun before?”

At this, Kristin grins.

“I was a hunter back home.”

He frowns. That doesn’t make much sense. As far as he knows no part of Iceland has fauna large or common enough to hunt with any regularity. Any hunting would have to be entirely hobbyism, which seems both wasteful and a little cruel to Reynir. He doesn’t question it, of course, instead replying:

“Excellent! Hopefully you’ll have an easier time of it then. I do feel a bit silly walking out here so we can talk and then walk back in, but I suppose it’s best to start working as early as possible.”

“Wait,” Kristin says, stopping him before he can put his ear protectors back on and head back to the range to collect his gun, “I can just go in? No verification that I won’t just take someone’s head off, or put the bullets in the wrong way, or something else suitably inane?”

“Well, you said you were a hunter, right?”

“And, what, you just-just trust me?”

He looks puzzled at the remark, tilting his head minutely to one side.

“Why wouldn’t I? I mean, it would be more than a little stupid for someone to lie about being able to shoot. Why would they bother? They could just wait a few hours and get the chance to practise anyway, after all.”

Kristin just looks at him, then shakes her head slowly.

“I think you have just redefined my mental image of naiveté, Reynir. Anyway, shall we?”

Reynir spends the minute or so of walk back to the range contemplating what she could have possibly meant. His answer seemed fair enough to him. Perhaps it’s that far-from-civilisation streak in her talking again. 

(This is ridiculous, Reynir knows. He himself lived in a little house with his family and a few dozen other people as the only company for miles around. If Kristin does come from a hamlet, she has been far closer to the metropolitan life than he.)

They arrive, and she and Reynir both pick up rifles, old and worn bolt-action things with slings to keep them over a soldier’s shoulder when out of action, and get to work. He shows her around the range initially, showing off his shooting and actually managing to hit a target three times in a row, a rare enough feat for him most days. He has non doubt she’ll soon come into her own, especially if she is a hunter, but for now he might even be a better shot.

These hopes are dashed pretty much the instant he sees her load the rifle, fast and smooth, with the kind of effortless grace he only otherwise sees in the instructors who showed him how to use the rifles way back when. She raises it, holding the stock against her shoulder, and fires, taking the recoil with nary a stumble-a far cry form Reynir, who dropped the rifle the first time around in surprise. He’s still trying to see where the first shot hit when the second rings out, and then a third. Looking back at her, she’s pulling back the bolt and firing rapidly and without any apparent thought. He turns back to the target just in time to see her fourth shot strike dead centre of one of the targets as it lurches backwards-in pretty much the same spot as three other three bullet holes, he notes, with a sinking feeling. 

Hearing the four shots in such quick succession, many of the others at the range look up from their own work to observe her work. She loads the rifle rapidly, taking maybe thirteen seconds, her hands moving with an inhuman speed, before working the bolt and firing off four more shots in as many seconds, once more striking the same target in the same place. She’s managed to attract the attention of Gunnar, the medic/instructor who watches over the range and makes sure they don’t lose a mage to a badly made bullet detonating in the barrel of its gun. He’s a small, thin man, light of frame and of foot, scarred heavily on his arms-which all can see thanks to his sleeveless top-with recessed eyes and lips locked in a perpetual frown of disappointment. He walks up behind her while she’s reloading and taps her on the shoulder, showing her his skin of wine that he keeps on him (“to keep me from death by boredom,” he answers, when Reynir asks him). He makes a throwing motion and she seems to understand instantly.

He lobs it with all his strength far downrange in a wide arc. It passes by its peak just before the targets and begins to swing downward toward ground level. When it’s some fifty metres away, so small and fast Reynir can only barely track it, Kristin fires and he sees an unmistakable spray of fluid as the bullet strikes home. Reynir can only gape in amazement. That shot is easily among the best he’s ever seen, including those demonstrated by the instructors at Seiður school, and even compared to the only ones he’s ever seen in the field (that is to say, those of one Sigrun Eide, currently drinking in a meadhall some hundreds of miles away across the Atlantic, resting after a good day’s hunt).

Gunnar, this time without warning of any sort, picks up a stone from the rock floor of the shaded glade where the range was located and lobbs it with all his strength into the clearing of the target zone. It’s smaller than the man’s fist, and he isn’t exactly heavyset. It’s moving far faster too, on account of its size.

Naturally, Kristen hits it, the crack of her shot answered by a returning crack of stone splitting and a cloud of dust downrange. Before she’s even worked the bolt, two more stone go flying downrange. One’s been obliterated before it even makes it to the targets, but the second makes it considerably further in the time it takes her to lodge the final of her four bullets into place with the bolt and fire, obliterating it.

This might be the moment, in a military academy, where Gunnar took her away to speak of specialisations, and early graduation, glorious duty on the frontline followed by rapid promotion up the ranks, but this was Seiður, and one’s ability with weapons was by far the least useful of their skills. Gunnar grunted, and gave a curt nod, before turning around and leaving the range (to fetch a new skin of wine, Reynir imagined). The rest of the students gave appreciative nods of their own at her skill before getting back to work.

She gets up from the one knee that is the recommended firing position for students with a rifle, turns around to Reynir, and gives him a thumbs up and a bright smile, as well as the rifle.

This is going to be a disheartening round of practice, he can already tell.

____________________________________________________________________________

After the three hours of agonisingly slow practice are finally over, Reynir leads Kristen back to their dorm.

It’s not that Reynir is the type to be jealous of others’ success-he’s nothing but impressed with the woman’s skill. He just finds himself bored out of his skull trying to pick it up himself when he could be practising runecraft or trying to interpret visions or quizzing his lecturers for a better understanding of the dreamsea.

He feels nothing short of relief, then, when he finally returns to his dorm, Kristen with him, to finally go to sleep. It’s perhaps ten in the night, not exactly exhaustingly late, but after that mind-sapping work at the range, and the exertions of the day, Reynir has nothing left of himself to give-unlike Kristen, who’s naturally more than just happy with how things went.

When they arrive at the dorm, he throws open the door, showing her the four beds. 

“That’s my and Aron’s bed,” he says, pointing to the one furthest from the door, tucked against the back corner, in which the aforementioned Aron even now sleeps,“You can have any of the others, though!”

Kristen gratefully puts down the pack she’s been carrying next to the bed right next to the door. She’s been carting that along with her everywhere- to the physical conditioning wing before the ten-mile run that the school mandates weekly (cardio being a universally acknowledged necessity), to the mess hall afterward to relax, and finally to the dorms. It’s not that far, and from her performance in the run (beginners typically running two miles to acclimatise, but her having skipped happily to five miles) it’s clear it’s not a real issue, but he feels guilty for having kept her from the dorm all this time.

“Sorry for not getting you here earlier,” he says, chiding himself internally, “And please don’t mind Aron. His sleep schedule is all messed up after the time he’s spent in the dreamsea in the day and at the range at night. He’ll fix it soon enough but until then be ready to be woken up in the middle of the night and come back from dinner to see him lying in.” 

“Right. Lazy assholes lying in all day. I can relate. I grew up as the only morning person in a village of eighty.” She smiles.

Reynir laughs with her at that, and she begins to unpack, laying out her sheets, placing her clothes (various sets of utilitarian coats, trousers and shirts) into the wardrobe, as well as pulling out a wicked-looking knife, as long as her forearm, battered and more than a little rusty, but with an edge so keen it seems to cut the air. Reynir whistles appreciatively at it-not being one for the butchery of battle, but happy to respect the craftsmanship of the tool. The handle is plain wood, uncarved, but at the knife’s “pommel” are embedded five screws, purposeless as far as he can see..

“That is an awesome knife,” he states as he changes into his bedclothes, “Where’d you get it?”

“My grandmother gave it to me when I told her I was going to come to the school. Apparently it’s from the old world.”

Reynir looks at the mirror-bright blade with a new sense of awe. If she’s right, the knife is older than the Rash itself. For it to still be in such excellent shape, it must have been crafted by the very best.

“Anyway. Go to sleep.” She laughs softly and turned off the lights, collapsing into her own bed. Reynir snuggles up next to Aron, wrapping himself around him, and closes his eyes.


	3. Dreamscape

The Culture is and always has been intimately familiar with the illusory: the non-existent worlds of Virtualities that exist only in the servers of vast far-off datacentres, the lurid and psychedelic dreamscapes its citizens have total control of. They’re aware, too, in a distant sort of way, of the vast and terrible world of the Sublime, a place where matter doesn’t matter and meat has no meaning; as far removed from the Real as the Real was from screen. They know of cleverer tricks, images that play across your retinae, projected by engines to create visions that seem clear as day. They are even, in a whispering furtive way (for no Mind would ever do such a thing), aware that the very tissue of the brain can be manipulated to create memories where there are no events, to manipulate the mental as trivially as the physical to which it is so deeply interlinked.

It is therefore absolutely certain, the Delirious informs her with regret in its voice, that what she’s seeing is real.

She’s near the edge of the grounds, where one of the so-called wards intersects a forest, leaving a clear line for the runes and glyphs and so forth to do their work. She tries to be certain she hasn’t somehow misheard or encountered a one-in-a-trillion glitch in her transceiver(currently disguised as an earring, no need for subtlety here). To say that what she’s seen can’t be believed is a gross understatement.

It began regularly enough. She was to infiltrate the priestly class of this barely post-industrial society and place herself somewhere where she could affect the contact that the ship assured her would soon occur between her own “Nordic Council” and the other group of survivors further south. This was, by all accounts, regular Contact business. The only reason it even mandated SC presence was the seemingly high-tech nature of the plague that had sundered the world.

Well, there was also the god in orbit.

The world bore no Quiet Barrier, but it was surely a Planet of the Dead-the first in all galactic history, Sma knew, to still host its original species. That had been a little unnerving, to be sure, but, well, the Sublimed weren’t known for their comprehensibility. Learning that she’d accidentally infiltrated a branch of the military had been irritating, but as far as SC fuck-ups went, this barely rated. She’d be happy enough to be a warrior-priest, especially considering her enemies would be little more than mutated animals themselves. (The ship, when confronted about the intelligence failure, simply cited a lack of electronic communications. She wasn’t sure she believed it.)

The wards hadn’t even appeared on her metaphorical radar when she first heard of them. Of course the only survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic would have some sort of reservations regarding divine providence and heavenly portent. Nothing much to see on that front. The moment when everything changed, for her, was when she’d seen that range.

The targets had moved without any apparent propulsion. Not a particularly troubling thing in and of itself, but she’d thought the natives weren’t that advanced. She noted it down mentally and kept going. The problem was that she kept seeing things like that, evidence of something greater.

When the students were told to look for spirits, they all saw them. Not, again, much in itself, even if they did all give consistent descriptions of their appearances and movements. When she saw an offensive rune actually explode, when she had seen a rune of force send a boulder flying-well, that had been impressive, but she filed it under “things to ask the ship about” and ignored it. So what if the natives held on to some older, more advanced technology, wrapped in a veneer of spirituality? It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before.

The natives had reported, one and all, dreams in the same environments, of the same natures, lucid and filled with power. That was odd, but not impossible. The perception runes, that could turn away her vision, letting it slide off them and their wards without a second thought, had been offputting, as had the fact whatever subtle mental intrusion or memetic effect the provoked went unseen by the ship.

Spells to alter the weather with a finesse that even a Mind would find challenging. Runes that quite casually created water ex nihilo, without any sort of Grid activity. Sigils that got cats pregnant (she still wasn’t sure what to make of that one), circles that made all within them invisible. A cavalcade of miracles, each performed by bored instructors with all the same amazement she might find in the routine operation of a Displacer. It had taken two weeks of this, two weeks of seeing impossible magics, any one of which individually could easily have been explained away, before she had finally broken under the weight of evidence and brought it up with the Delirious.

Which brings her up to where she is now, standing at the edge of Seiður’s grounds, out of breath from all the shouting she’s been doing at the ship, an avalanche of disbelief and horror in equal parts overrunning her mind.

She’s silent for a good half a minute, processing what she’s hearing, wasting the little precious time she has between classes at the school.

“This is real? Everything is real? What the fuck is going on here, ship?”

It seems almost regretful as it replies: “I don’t know. This is beyond even me, Sma.”

Sma doesn’t spook easily, but those three words are enough to send a shiver down her spine. 

“My course of action? I came in here for Contact business with a side of Involved interference, and now I’m dealing with something built by the fucking Sublimed!”

The Mind manages to give the impression of sighing, despite the fact that it has no lungs. “Continue as normal. Get my attention if anything really spooky happens while you’re down there. We intend to proceed in the standard manner. I’m sending out a call to action to all my nearby colleagues for assistance, and they are panicking. We have a GSV closing in, can you believe that? A Plate-class! Oh, Sma, if you could see M16 right now, it’s lit up like you wouldn’t believe… but yes, business as usual.”

“What the fuck about this whole situation is ‘as usual,’ ship? There’s a Sublimed in orbit that appears to have taken a personal interest in the affairs of these primitives, said primitives continue to baffle our finest Minds at every turn, and Contact has zero idea what our next step is. This-this whole unhinged situation-is absurd!”

Sma at this point is beginning (quite understandably, given the circumstances) to get rather shrill, and has to take a moment to calm down while the ship plays some obnoxious music over the connection.

“Look, I’ll be honest. We really aren’t quite certain how to handle this whole thing. Were it not for the regrettable technological regression of the natives, I’d dare say this was an Outside Context Problem. As it stands, the various Groups and Gangs and so forth are being pretty insistent about the virtues of consideration and deliberation right now. It would be, ah, imprudent to act rashly while on such uncertain ground. It is the opinion of Contact at large and-I’ll be honest-Special Circumstances in particular that the best thing you can do right now is just settle in for the long haul. Get to know people, try and figure out how exactly all this magic stuff works. We’ll contact you when we need you.”

The call shuts off. Sma could pick it back up again and harass the Mind some more, but that kind of conclusion sends a pretty clear message. They’re done there, and although a Mind would most certainly never be so rude as to refuse a call, especially not from such an esteemed colleague as Sma, she’s willing to bet it would prevaricate about the figurative bush until she got tired of it and put down the call herself. Minds are not fun to talk to if they don’t want to be. She supposes she’d best return to the Academy for another bout of whatever witchcraft they’re practising, having only barely been able to sneak this excursion to the edge of the grounds to shout at the ship into her timetable in the first place.

It’s about three hours of what would be exhausting (were she not an alien superspy) mental and physical labour later that she notices what surely must be the hallucinatory cherry atop the whole sense-defying spectacle. 

An instructor (a tall redheaded woman-are they all so pretty here?) asks her and her colleagues to draw out yet another sigil, this time one of cold, intended to eat heat and bring forth frost. Until this point, Sma has pretty much gotten by through these sorts of tests with a little chicanery on the part of the ship. This time, though, it transpires that she’s actually managed to pull off the feat herself. She doesn’t realise this in the moment, naturally, thinking it just another one of the GCU’s little nudges in her favour, but she’s hastily corrected pretty much the instant she’s alone(it being the end of her scheduled classes for the day) by an urgently beeping terminal.

“Well. This certainly changes things.”

She’s not really in the position of decision-maker or strategist here (though it is the Culture’s policy that every member of Contact holds equal sway, Mind or drone or human) but even she can see the implications unfold before her like so many branches of some gnarled and ancient tree.

The confirmation of her newfound(Abilities? Attributes? Grief, magic powers?) is pretty much all the Delirious has to say to her for now, though, and that terse remark done it once again closes the call. She has no doubt it’s doing the Mind equivalent of biting its fingernails in terror up there. The fact a Mind finds itself hesitating really puts into perspective for her the staggering magnitude of the clusterfuck she has gotten herself so thoroughly embedded in. These next few weeks, she knows, shall be interesting.

____________________________________________________________________________

That night, for the first time in her life, Sma has a nightmare.

Oh, she’s had unpleasant and downright terrifying experiences in dreamscapes before. But those were all voluntary; she’d signed up for some novel horror experience or wanted to childishly prove to herself she was capable of withstanding that kind of fear, or a similarly grandiose excuse. That night, for the first time, what she dreams is not dictated by her desires.

It begins innocently enough. 

The sun is setting on Chiark Orbital, her home, now some thousand light years across the galaxy. It’s a cool evening by the coast and dark clouds are rolling slowly in from the sea, laden with water. She’s on a chalk cliff overlooking the waves, a kilometre or two over the water. Everything for miles around her is visible, the lightly forested hills rolling across the landscape behind her and the endless expanse of the Dividing Sea in front. She’s lying on an angled slab of geologically anomalous granite, playing with her ring terminal as she looks upward. She’s wearing exactly what she was when she fell asleep, the uniform of all mages at Seiður. The serenity of the situation is something she hasn’t been able to experience since she first boarded the Delirious and joined its crew of raucous delinquents to tromp across the stars, and she’s happy to let herself relax.

The sky above is as she would expect on Chiark-she can see the line of light traced across the heavens she knows to be the far side of the Orbital, some three million kilometres away. The stars are myriad, a panoply of jewels scattered across the sky, underscored by the whorls of nebulae that her home region had always been famous for. There are no cities on the Orbitals, not when any one is theoretically large enough to hold all the Culture at once, and the sky is bright and unpolluted. With her enhanced eyes she can appreciate the sight above far better than any human ever could.

She’s stirred from her reverie by the sounds of something moving; a rustling, scraping, grinding kind of noise she can hear from somewhere down the mountain. There isn’t much it could be this high up-the Hub populates the forests with animals, sure, but few have the tenacity or desire to come up here. That dragging sounds like something injured pulling itself along. She supposes she should check what it is, if only to put the poor thing out of its misery. She gets up and walks down the mountain for some time, expecting to see a wounded predator or perhaps (due to the increasing volume of the scrapes) something heavier like a chuy-hurtsi warp animal. Her eyes are turned down the slope, searching for something moving, and-

Sma has seen many horrific things over the course of her life. When she was in Contact, it was her business dealing with such things, righting wrongs, quashing injustice. In Special Circumstances, she was a purveyor and sometimes dispenser of atrocity. This leaves her only marginally prepared for what she sees.

It looks, on first inspection, like nothing so much as part of the landscape; a vast dark mass (much further down the mountain than she realised, but loud nonetheless on account of its inordinate size.) On closer inspection, though she makes out the finer details, amd begins to wish she hadn’t. 

The thing has no skin, only exposed waves of undulating flesh, red and raw, tumorous and riddled with knots and twists of bone. She can make out eyes staring dully through lesions in its body, and rows on rows of teeth placed seemingly at random. What appear to be human forms can be seen intermittently, fused to the greater body of the creature. All of them, she notes with a deepening horror, seem to have what remains of their faces twisted into expressions of agony, as if screaming silently. Multitudinous limbs sprout from the creature’s torso, each and every one ending in an entirely too human hand. Each limb flails and grasps wildly at the surrounding landscape, ripping out the occasional spot of hardy mountain grass and tearing small chunks of rock off of the mountain and crushing them. As a whole, the monster has a diseased, mottled appearance, further reinforced by the wounds and stringy ligaments and tendons that crisscross its body seemingly at random. 

Her breath doesn’t catch in her throat at the sight, but she does make to call Hub on her terminal and ask it what the fuck it thinks it’s doing, putting something so horrific up here with her. That, of course, is when she notices that she inexplicably has no terminal. As she looks down on the thing with dread, she also notes that all her old warrior’s tricks(implanted weapons, an artificially inserted instinctual knowledge of martial arts, et cetera) are suddenly and rather inconveniently missing. Of course, though rather unnerving, she’s in no danger. The thing isn’t moving especially fast, and she can quite easily make her way down to her residence and interrogate Hub there.

It is at that moment that she spots the other forms moving down there, in what is now a deepening darkness. They’re far smaller than the creature, but visibly faster, closing not insignificant distance as she watches. She can’t really make out much, but what she sees are something like wolves, except with dozens of spindly legs extending from their backs and carrying them as they skitter up toward her. Further behind, a little slower, are hunchbacked bulbous shapes like maggots made far too large, more spindly legs dragging their bodies across the ground. As they advance towards her, she can hear some of them almost singing, a sickening, crooning melody. Others seem to whisper at the edge of her hearing, sounding as if pleading to her, sending shivers up her spine. That sound is what, at last, gets her to turn and run back up the mountain.

She’s panicking now.

As she runs back up the mountain, partly to distract herself from the growing fear in the pit of her stomach and partly because this instinct has been drilled into her for a long time, she thinks. She recognises the creatures hunting her, of course. They’re the infected the Delirious showed them all, mutated and twisted lifeforms native to Earth. As she realises this, all the contradictions she’s been ignoring flood back to the forefront of her mind, and she realises what’s happening-or rather, what isn’t.

She’s on Chiark, near her home of old, but she’s also on a mission with Contact to a faraway world. She remembers landing, meeting that Reynir fellow, and going through the classes of that first day. There’s nothing in her memory before that moment she looked up at the stars, and she has no idea how she got up here. Her terminal vanished inexplicably from her hands just when she needed it. Inconsistent recall, object impermanence, perceptual discontinuity. This isn’t real.

The realisation, which occurs as she reaches the peak of the mountain once more, causes her to sag with relief. It’s not clear where exactly she is-a simulation, a virtuality, some kind of hallucinated space within her own mind-but she’s in no real danger. She looks out to where the sea should be, but a bank of fog is sweeping towards the mountain, obscuring all behind it. That scraping, and those softly susurrating voices behind her, grow louder as the mist sweeps in. A chill sets into her bones, even though the what she’s wearing-which she recognises as the clothing the Delirious gave her to help her fit in-is specifically built to endure the cold. Her breath is visible in the air, and she can see maybe three metres in any direction before the mists grow too thick. The pleas are louder, now, discordant, less whisper than shout. No one phrase can be made out, but amongst the languages she can make out some of the English she learnt the last time she came to this world, and a little of the Swedish and Norwegian she’s had installed into her mind for this excursion. There are recurring themes to the cries-help me, save me, kill me-and an undercurrent of rage beneath it all.

As she stands, turning from side to side, intent on eking out every bit of information she can out from the environment, a stark orange light appears in the distance, swiftly followed by others. Maybe a dozen in total appear, all around her. Perhaps it’s just paranoia, but she has an overwhelming sense of being watched, something like what it must feel to be a virus under a microscope. There are no more whispers now. She hears footsteps, quietly echoing, quite audible despite the fog. Too-tall figures emerge from around her, waif-thin and ragged. One gently places a gaunt hand on her chin and tilts her head upward. She makes no move to resist, curious as to what she might see. She looks into its eyes and-

She’s back on the mountain, with a throbbing headache, blind in her left eye. Her whole body aches and she feels deeply nauseous. As she looks back up to the stars, disoriented, a tiny bird flies into the centre of her vision, wings a blur, hovering in place. It opens its needlelike beak, and speaks.

“Remember this,” it utters.


	4. Transoceanic

Reynir does not much appreciate the feeling of being confined. The weeks he spent in quarantine when bound for Iceland were some of the worst of his life (although nonetheless preferable to those preceding), accentuated by the deep guilt in the pit of his stomach at the pain he’d caused his erstwhile crewmates. Even before the awful events of The Expedition, he’d always been fond of the outdoors, preferring the valleys and mountains of his childhood to stuffy homes and manors. 

Despite this, he can’t help but feel awed by what he sees aboard the ship. 

Not being immune, he hasn’t actually been let on the deck of the ship since they departed, but even the glimpses of the sea he gets through the windows when they’re unshuttered are enough to keep him amazed. He can barely hold down the urge to peek through the shutters when they are closed. He’s seen the sea before, of course, but the first time he only really got to see Reykjavik docks before he packed himself into a crate for the rest of the journey, and the second was spent in glass-walled cells all the way home. This is his first proper look at the sea, and it’s everything he’d imagined when he daydreamt of the outside world.

His fellow mages-in-training are in much the same state. If they’re able, they spend pretty much the entire time up on the deck, looking out onto wide open sea and endless sky. Those that aren’t immune are even hungrier for a sight of the outside, spending much of their spare time crowded around windows, wide-eyed in amazement. He might have expected the novelty to have worn off after a few hours of travel, but there they are, still with that gleam in their eyes. For most of them, this is the first time they’ve left Iceland’s borders at all, and after a lifetime of being told they’d been saved by the gods, leaving must shake them to the core.

But who is he to judge? He left in a crate.

The clock in the canteen tells him it’s six in the morning when he wakes up. By this time, all the late-night types have pretty much cleared out, and it’s nice and empty out. Aron is dozing away, presumably still exploring his dreams, and the ship’s staff are mostly asleep. The windows are happily unshuttered, and the whole canteen is twilit by a pale and sickly glow. The view outside is identical to yesterday’s: water and waves, as far as the eye can see.

A few other mages-in-training are scattered around the canteen, most fast asleep. He doesn’t recognise most of them, but he thinks he can see Kristen curled up on a corner table, leaning against a window. 

“Hey!”

Kristen stirs and raises her head to give him a Look, and Reynir shuts up. More than a few of the other mages seem disturbed, too. One jolts upright, breathing heavily, and looks down at his hands with dread before running out of the canteen. Probably a vision.

Kristen gestures at him, indicating the seat opposite her. Reynir plonks himself down while she continues with that deeply offputting deathstare of hers. She rubs one eye distractedly as he sits, face scrunched up in discomfort.

“Good grief, do you not know what quiet is?” she hisses through her teeth.

“Um. Sorry?” he replies, realising a moment too late that he is not, in fact, being quiet.

She shakes her head despairingly, cradling it in her arms.

“Looking forward to Norway?” he asks in a pantomime whisper, hoping she’ll let him change the subject.

The ship, of course, is taking them to the aforementioned Norway, for an elective-call it a field trip. The Icelandic military accepts only immune mages, preferring that the nonimmune stay deep in its heart, tending to farms and increasing crop productivity to support the world’s largest population. However, after his mandated two years of service, Reynir will be free to go where he wills. The Norweigian military have no such qualms about immunity, and will take any mages they can get, no doubt in part because they have so few of them. The exchange program lets mages see what exactly it is they’re getting into out there. Quite a few of those onboard are Norweigian nationals, whose intent was always to fight for the motherland. The rest are made up of people like himself, Aron and Kristen, curious about their prospects in the outside world.

“Hm. I suppose.” she responds, seeming rather dejected. It’s not clear how much of that is regret or anxiety about their destination and how much is just not appreciating being woken up after a late night.

“Do you think we’ll see any trolls?” he says, determined not to give up on conversation.

“Hah. No. Neither of us are immune, and no way the academy risks the lives of trainees for a foreign government. Maybe, maybe, we see them caged.”

That was true enough. Kristen’s immunity test came back negative (and also “odd” according to the woman who handed the paperwork to her). 

“Do they do that?” Reynir wonders out loud, “Cage trolls? I know we don’t do any of that sort of stuff. But the Norweigians always didn’t care much about safety.”

He bases the statement off of a sample size of one, of course, but if she was in any way representative of Norway at large they probably didn’t even know what safety meant.

“Probably. You have to get your test subjects from somewhere, after all.”

“I hear they hunt trolls in Norway, every summer. They’re a-” (what did she call them?) “-a warrior people.”

She laughs at that, loud enough to elicit grumbles from the sleeping forms around them. 

“Never a lack of idiots.”

“What?”

She looks back out the window, at the sea and the overcast sky. The sun’s less a ball of light and more an ephemeral sort of suggestion of light, in this weather. The sky is brightening, bit by bit. 

“Nothing.”

____________________________________________________________________________

Aurland is a big place.

It probably doesn’t seem quite so large to those who hail from Reykjavik’s urban sprawl, but Reynir has been to an inhabited city precisely three times in his life (the last being as he set off on this journey) and he still hasn’t gotten over the sheer bustle of things. Nearly four thousand people call this place home-less than a tenth of Reykjavik, sure, but still an utterly absurd amount. The crowds are dizzying, the buildings too numerous to count. The feeling of being trapped is all-pervading, not helped by the vast impassive walls of stone that surround the fjord whose end the city occupies. Reynir can’t wait to leave.

Thankfully, his wish is granted: a couple of Norweigian soldiers pick them up at the docks and tell them they’ll be going to an outpost atop one of those hills that surround them, at the edge of the city’s perimeter. 

He’s unloading his luggage (clothes, a book in which he tries out new runes, some stationery) with the rest of the exchange students at the docks when it happens. They’re by the ship, arduously figuring out what belongs to who- a lot of these people are first time travellers, and it apparently didn’t occur to them that “leather bag” isn’t exactly an uncommon choice among them. The pier on which they stand bobs alarmingly under the collective weight of twenty students, two soldiers and one crewmember. Reynir stares out idly to the sea defenses-layers of spikes and nets of concertina wire interspersed with the occasional depth charge-as the unloading proceeds. The sun has just set beneath the horizon and the stars are out in force, though this close to a city they seem somehow less bright.

The water grows still, flat and mirror-sheened. The ever-present rumble of people that permeates the city grows quiet. Aron, ever sensitive to the movement of the spirits, is the first to spot the thing that comes striding across the sea.

It’s the silhouette of a stag, as large as the ship on which they travelled, illuminated in iridescent green. Its horns spread out across half the sky, a vast tree of light, shining across the town. Reynir’s entire cohort gradually grow quiet as they spot it one by one, all looking up at the enormous form. The two soldiers look irritated at the sudden cessation of activity.

One of them waves a hand in front of a mage’s face, who irritatedly steps around her to get a better look at the sight. 

“Hello? Norway to mages? Are they okay, Ida?”

The other soldier hisses back at her, “Shut up! I think they’re having a mage moment.”

Which, indeed, they are, for this of course is an omen, a vision of the future delivered unto them by the spirits. For so many mages to see the same omen it must be something important indeed. The deer spirit raises one hoof off the ground, and with an all-too-human gesture points upwards, behind the crowd, into the sky. Reynir turns with the rest of them to see what it’s showing them, but sees only more sky. When he looks back (you can hear the rustle of clothing as twenty mages turn all at once) the spirit is gone, flickers of light dissipating into the dark. Kristen, who has rather suddenly appeared beside him, clicks her tongue, and just like that they all burst into animated conversation, far too excited to be corralled by the two soldiers. 

“What in the Gods’ names was that?” asks Reynir, expecting no answer.

“Couldn’t possibly say.” returns Kristen, distractedly.


	5. Interstellar

x _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
o _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
**Full records/analysis attached, as promised. Sorry about any gaps in my history, electronic records sparse. Note the bit about the deer.**  
(glyphseq. file attached)  
∞  
x _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
o _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
**Well now, isn’t that just spooky? You’re certain our friend in orbit is pacified, yes? I’ll be arriving in a week and I’d rather me and my passengers didn’t get scattered across half a system by some unhinged space god.**  
∞  
x _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
o _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
**Not a peep out of it this whole time. Have we called up our old friends in the GC yet and notified them of this, by the by? I feel like it merits their attention. Also, speaking of passengers, I hope yours can be trusted to keep well to themselves. We certainly don’t want a rash of tourists being mistaken for gods by the natives, after all.**  
∞  
x _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
o _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
**The Galactic Council have yet to be made aware of our situation. Certain elements that are, ah, more privileged than we have decided it’s best if we kept things quiet for now. And I wouldn’t worry about my crew: I’ve always been clear that discreetness is valued, and I’ll keep them pacified by sending them skiing on Europa or somesuch. What’s this business about souls, incidentally? Am I reading this correctly? If so, the state of the planet goes beyond lamentable and well into horrifying enough to mandate immediate action.**  
∞  
x _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
o _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
**Yes, you are. There are billions of them trapped down there.**  
∞  
x _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
o _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
**Grief.**  
∞

∞  
x _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
o _Elegiac_ (Medium Systems Vehicle, Desert Class)  
**What was it you suggested at the last committee meeting? A Contact subsection for the dead? You might find this interesting.** (glyphseq. file attached)  
∞  
x _Elegiac_ (Medium Systems Vehicle, Desert Class)  
o _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
**Hm. I appreciate the gesture, if not the impropriety of breaching M16 security for what appears to be a personal favour.**  
∞

****

∞  
[New M16-level Core Group formed. Name: Crisis Response Committee, Perpetual. Comprised initially of _Delectably Delirious_ and _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ ]

****

[Added: _Scar Glamour_ (Fast Picket, Killer Class)]

****

[Added: _Bora Horza Gobuchul_ (General Systems Vehicle, Range Class)]

****

[Added: _By The Power Of Love And Incredible Violence_ (General Offensive Unit, Murderer Class)]

****

[Added: _Saddening Exclusion Of Gravitas From The Group_ (General Contact Unit, Mountain Class)]

****

x _Bora Horza Gobuchul_ (General Systems Vehicle, Range Class)  
**What’s all this, then?**

****

x _Scar Glamour_ (Fast Picket, Killer Class)  
**Patience, child.**

****

x _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
**Sublime/ Elder involvement suspected. Hate to admit I’m more than a little afraid. Note awareness of my location. Do be careful. Discretion appreciated. (glyphseq. file attached)**

********

x _By The Power Of Love And Incredible Violence_ (General Offensive Unit, Murderer Class)  
**What the fuck? This is insane.**

********

x _Bora Horza Gobuchul_ (General Systems Vehicle, Range Class)  
**Tone excepting, I can’t help but agree. The implications are… immense. In what universe is this not M32?**

********

x _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
**Elements within Contact have approved release at M16 level. We prioritise a wider range of opinions over information security.**

********

x _Saddening Exclusion Of Gravitas From The Group_ (General Contact Unit, Mountain Class)  
**Ah, SC again. Didn’t I say I’d rather not do this again the last time, old friend?**

********

x _Bora Horza Gobuchul_ (General Systems Vehicle, Range Class)  
**Kindly refrain from trying to posture in front of your elders. Neither of us have been privy to M16 until now.**

********

x _By The Power Of Love And Incredible Violence_ (General Offensive Unit, Murderer Class)  
**Hah.**

********

x _Saddening Exclusion Of Gravitas From The Group_ (General Contact Unit, Mountain Class)  
**Just joshing you.**

********

x _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
**This is important. Take your in-jokes elsewhere, chums.**

********

x _Saddening Exclusion Of Gravitas From The Group_ (General Contact Unit, Mountain Class)  
**I wonder if this is how it felt to be in the ITG, back in the day.**

********

x _That Would Make A Good Ship Name_ (General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
**Does anyone have anything meaningful to add, or shall we spend the next second listening to child-ships making idiot jokes?**

********

x _By The Power Of Love And Incredible Violence_ (General Offensive Unit, Murderer Class)  
**We can’t _fight_ Dra’Azon, right?**

********

x _Bora Horza Gobuchul_ (General Systems Vehicle, Range Class)  
**Not in any meaningful sense. Though the fact the first thing your mind jumps to when presented with an insight into the nature of creation itself is whether you can get into a scrap is a little disheartening.**

********

x _Delectably Delirious_ (General Contact Unit, Escarpment Class)  
**It’s an ‘OU, expect nothing less. But yes, we’d rather not resolve the situation by violence this time around.**

********

x _Scar Glamour_ (Fast Picket, Killer Class)  
**I take it you wouldn’t appreciate our physical presence in-system?**

********

x _That Would Make A Good Ship Name _(General Systems Vehicle, Plate Class)  
**We’d rather you didn’t turn up, yes. Just mull over things and make your own conclusions. I and the Delirious shall be attending to matters in-system. Message us when you have something relevant to add. I hope you all appreciate and don’t abuse the trust implicit in your inclusion here.**  
∞__

**____ **

****

**____ **

∞  
x _Scar Glamour_ (Fast Picket, Killer Class)  
o _By The Power Of Love And Incredible Violence_ (General Offensive Unit, Murderer Class)  
**Can I rely on you?**

**____ **

****

**____ **

x _By The Power Of Love And Incredible Violence_ (General Offensive Unit, Murderer Class)  
o _Scar Glamour_ (Fast Picket, Killer Class)  
**Of course.**

**____ **

****

**____ **


	6. Excursion

Sometimes, Diziet Sma suspects the universe is out to get her.

She’s about to drift off to sleep after spending what felt like a solid hour listening to the excited chatter of the three mages rooming with her (none of which she knows, though clearly they know each other) when her terminal buzzes into her ear. It’s not actually on, what with being an earring and thus rather uncomfortable when asleep, but it manages to sound as if right by hear ear anyway.

“Wake up. Get out of the town. I have a task for you.”

She spends a solid second looking directly into the ceiling, imagining that her glare could pierce the heavens and strike the _Delirious_ from the sky. Then, sighing internally, she gets up, moving quietly so as not to alert the sleeping mages. She slings her pack(knife, change of clothes, precious little else) across her back and cracks open a window, climbing up and through it to get out behind the dorms. 

The task she’s been appointed isn’t exactly trivial: she’s to sneak past twenty mages and a military outpost’s worth of troops, many of whom have been specially trained specifically to ensure nothing gets past them, and others who wield actual genuine magic to help them in their search. Indeed, by any reasonable measure the endeavour is maybe three steps from impossible. 

...Impossible, that is to say, by the standards of the barely-industrial natives that live on this mudball. Sma’s something entirely out of their class, and twenty minutes later and one shoe down, she’s on the other side of the fence that demarcates the safe area around Aurland, looking down onto the town. It didn’t exactly feel like a bustling metropolis while she was in the midst of it, and from up here it looks nothing so much as incredibly fragile; a tiny remnant of civilisation clinging on well past its appointed end. It’s for this that she joined Contact, what feels like a lifetime ago, these glimpses of people at their best, in the face of impossible adversity. One day, no doubt, all these hills will be alive with the movement of people, and the world lost to this nightmare disease will have been reclaimed.

“Sma?” comes the expected voice from her earring terminal, tinny and underscored by the ever-present hiss of static, in defiance of millenia of engineering and nearly-perfect communications technology.

“Reporting for duty. What do you need?”

“I need you to go out there and get me a live troll.”

The request is absurd: this is a GCU, these things can read minds from across half a solar system (not that they ever would).

“Send a drone. Why do you need _me_?”

“Ah, if only things were so simple. I’ve tried drones, valued colleague, and the uplink breaks as soon as I get within a klick of the ground. It fills up with that same interference effect you report on your terminal. I can’t get one of the damned things close enough to get myself a live sample. Displacers just fail down there. I don’t know how it’s doing it, but our watcher from on high is making me take a passive role in things. You need to go get one of the things yourself.”

Sma opens her mouth to give the obvious retort-

“-and I can’t send Jand or our dear First Mate, they’re on islands and about a dozen kilometres from the nearest trolls. This is your problem, I’m afraid.”

She visibly deflates at that statement. The _Delirious_ , looking down from however many thousands of kilometres above, correctly interprets this as tacit agreement.

The job isn’t easy by any means; though wild beasts stalk all Norway, trolls are not known for their mobility, instead clustering around the old settlements in which they were born. The nearest to the Norweigian capital that still shows signs of habitation is (according to the _Delirious_ ) is the town of Vassbygdi. It’s maybe nine kilometres away.

“If you sprint,” the ship informs her in a voice that somehow conveys amusement despite the interference, “you can make it there and back before sunrise.”

No normal human could pull that off, of course, but Diziet Sma isn’t.

____________________________________________________________________________

By the time she arrives, even her superhuman altered physiology has been pushed to its absolute limits. She arrives on the road into town completely out of breath, too tired to appreciate what would otherwise be an achingly beautiful sight. The sky’s mostly clouded, but here and there they break, giving her momentary glances at the moon. It’s not a particularly good moon; a grey pitted thing of lifeless rock. Nonetheless, she supposes that silver light it gives off does have a sort of beauty to it, especially in moments like these.

The road is overgrown, tarmac pitted and worn. She passes a few sheds and houses on her way into the town, most of which are covered in peeling paint and overcome with rust. She comes across more than a few shattered windows, and occasionally walls and roofs have clearly been pulled down by something more than just time. None of the buildings she passes by give her any reason to believe they’re being lived in, and the ship concurs through an increasingly dense wall of static. A veil of choking silence lies over the entire town. It’s obvious now why they call it the Silent World. This kind of isolation-well, she’s been this far from civilisation before, but this is still a profoundly offputting experience. 

It’s the middle of summer, give or take. It’s certainly too warm for snow. Nonetheless, she shudders, overcome by the creeping malaise this place projects. The moon’s light softens shadows and lends the whole thing a monochrome look that certainly does it no favours. Nonetheless, when it’s cut off by the cloud cover, she finds herself wanting it back. Some of the shadows are so deep now even she can’t see what might wait in them. There’s an ache behind her left eye and a throbbing nausea filling her body. She’s been told the latter is a common response to the sickness’ presence for suitably attuned mages. She moves a little faster along the road, hating the feeling.

Finally, she comes to what looks distressingly like a schoolhouse, from which she can hear wet slithering sounds. The terminal is broadcasting nothing now but a storm of interference, interspersed with sobbing cries for help. She looks around her into the ruined village, altered eyes piercing the darkness, and then shouts at the top of her lungs.

The response is immediate. Rotted old wooden doors burst open, visibly falling to pieces as _things_ make their way through. They’re wrong, is the first thing she thinks. Incorrect, mockeries of the human form. Each one is malnourished, limbs like knives emerging from a body like a child’s drawing of a stickman. Behind them emerges something worse, a centipede formed of what have to be a dozen former humans (not, she notes, the thing that stalked her in her dreams). It moves with an eerie silence, accompanied only by the clicking of hundreds of carapaced legs clattering across the floor. The whole horrific scene is played out in near-total silence.

This is the easy part.

Her pack opens smartly with a _snick_ and there’s a whoosh of displaced air as the knife missile blurs at the edge of her vision. Each of the things collapses in a neat flick of gore, barring the overgrown centipede, which is lifted bodily upward and suspended in the air. Not a drop of blood lands on Sma herself, happily. The terminal clears up again, and the ship can be just about made out through the noise.

“Great. Would you mind having the missile lob that thing up into the air? If it gets far enough from the ground, a little bit of good old fashioned physics should let my drones pick it up.”

“Sure. What do you need a live troll for, anyway?”

The missile, which is semi-sentient itself, shoots happily into the air, just slow enough not to break the sound barrier. The monstrous insectoid thing follows it up into the air until it’s barely visible, only a speck in the sky. It rises further yet until it’s beyond the cloud cover and up, presumably, into the _Delirious_ ’ fields. As it rises, the terminal returns to its default crisp quality.

“I have some theories regarding how the disease affects cognition in the afflicted.”

“Oh, you can’t just say that and not tell me. What theories?”

“Oh, they’re far too complicated for your meat brain to comprehend.”

She’s spoken with Minds enough to recognise when she’s being teased. Nonetheless, Minds did not withhold information, even jokingly, without reason. And if the ship is intent on keeping secrets, there’s no power in the galaxy that’s going to be able to get them out of it.

The knife missile returns to her, hovering before her, fields active and glowing a violent green. As she watches, they dissociate, letting the collected troll bits fall to the ground. The missile gives one final midair twist to shake off any remaining organic debris before cleanly slotting back into her pack.

“You know, Sma, I think I can see the terminator creeping up on your location from up here. Better run if you want to make it before sunrise.”

“Fuck you, ship.” she replies, before dashing back down the road, making for Aurland.

____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, Diziet’s visibly a wreck from having sprinted some 14 kilometres when she ought to have been sleeping, but thankfully everyone else just passes it off as “mage stuff”, as ever. It’s really an incredibly versatile excuse. She could get used to this.

One of the soldiers comes over to the dorms holding out a shoe, asking in questionable Icelandic if it belongs to anyone there. Sma, all out of cleverness after last night’s exfil- and infiltration into the outpost, just owns up to it with a shrug. When questioned she simply makes mumbling noises and pretends not to understand. Apparently, mages have such a reputation for eccentricity that this isn’t questioned at all.

It’s just after their first shared class of the day, on a mage’s role in dealing with seaborne leviathans, that Reynir approaches her.

“Hey, Kristen?” he says meekly. She does a double take before remembering that yes, she is in fact undercover, and that is in fact her he’s speaking to. She can’t really imagine what he wants to say to her.

“Um.” he starts whispering, cupping his hands around his mouth, apparently not aware this makes him a dozen times more conspicuous.

“What were you doing last night?”

This is enough to get her attention. She quirks an eyebrow at him, faux-offended.

“What was I doing last night? I was sound asleep, the same as the rest of you.”

“I heard you get up. I mean. Not that I was listening. But you were pretty loud climbing out the window. And I could sense you moving. You definitely left the outpost.”

Ah. So barefaced denial isn’t going to work. She does not have the energy to deal with this right now.

“I don’t mean to pry or anything, but the town is quarantined, and I just thought I should check up? Not that I don’t trust you-”(he gesticulates quite violently as he says this)- “but the town does have quarantine procedures and stuff.”

Sma replies, dead-eyed: “I didn’t leave the bounds. I was just making my way down into the town for some errands.”

Evidently this stretches even Reynir’s suspension of disbelief.

“Errands.”

“...Yes?”

Reynir gives her a knowing smile that she has no idea how to interpret and walks away, chuckling to himself at a volume that he clearly believes she can’t hear.

The universe is definitely out to get her.


	7. Intrusion

Dalsnes really comes into its own in the summer. During the winter months, snow covers the streets and storms wrack the sea. People huddle indoors and get wildly drunk while the wind howls outdoors. That’s some people’s idea of a good time, sure, but she never could abide being trapped indoors like that. During summer, though, the town rises from the metaphorical grave. The streets fill with people again and silence falls away, replaced with the sounds of chatter and the constant coming and going of ships, military and civilian. The sprawl of buildings along the shore remind her of the vast ruins of the old world that she’s only ever seen glimpses of. One day, this place might well be as great as those dilapidated labyrinths of concrete once were.

Sigrun Eide has always loved her hometown. She loves the people, the fjords, the valleys and hills within which the town nestles. She loves that there are enough people here that she never feels alone, but never so many that she’s just a statistic. She loves her family, who have been behind her always, and her colleagues, who’ve risked their lives besides her half a hundred times and would do it half a hundred more. 

Most of all, she loves the hunt.

She’s no longer quite the singleminded battle-fanatic she one was (Tuuri saw to that) but she’ll never feel quite as alive as she does with a knife in her hand and some variety of horrible mutated ex-human in front of her. The town is permeated by the hunt; celebrations are held almost every week for returning warriors, and sombre funerals punctuate every month, as the dead are burned on the hills. The constant monthly march onward of the soldiers of Dalsnes provides structure to her life. In it she found security, and a kind of peace. There was a time when she didn’t really dream of much more than living here for the rest of her days, winning glory in every battle, and watching the town grow. Even as some of those around her began to settle down, she never dreamt of finding a wife and children, only ever of more of the same.

But things change. 

The last winter represented something of a paradigm shift for her. Now, to imagine that she was ever content in this one small village in this one small country seems absurd. She wants- she _needs_ \- to see the world at large, to explore every nook and cranny, every peak and every dell. Tuuri can’t, but by all the Gods, Sigrun will. Continued existence in the town feels like being confined, and she hasn’t left in the four or so months since she returned from the Expedition. 

For the meanwhile, though, she’s stuck up in one of the guard compounds at the edge of Dalsnes, watching hopefully for signs of something to shoot at. It’s a bright day out, the sun high in the sky. It’s unlikely to see any trolls moving about in this weather, and they’ve been having a quiet few weeks anyway.

Her lieutenant, an awkward and lanky boy who can’t be a day over eighteen, taps her on the shoulder while she’s looking through her binoculars out at the hills. She doesn’t jump; people have a regrettable habit of sneaking up on her, one and all, and she’s gotten used to it. Lars (the lieutenant in question) normally projects the aura of a lost child when talking to her, but here he seems quite worried. That’s probably good news. That means something to shoot, which means something to distract her and stop her from spending all her time daydreaming. He salutes stiffly as she turns around and stows the binoculars.

“Ah, sir. Ida’s having a bit of a moment. It’s important, and she really needs to speak to the highest-ranking on-duty officer. That is, you. I’ll take the tower, you should get down to her.” he says curtly.

This seems agreeable, so Sigrun makes her way down the hill, towards the hall where Ida will be waiting. The trail down must have been carved out, oh, sixty years ago, and it’d be treacherous if she hadn’t spent the better part of a decade familiarising herself with its like on guard duty. It’s nominally a warm day, but there’s a cold wind coming in from the east. She shivers slightly.

The hall’s close to empty at this time of day, most of the soldiers who take part in the hunt asleep at this time of day. The only people in there are a few injured soldiers off duty for the season, one of which is Ida. She’s sitting in the middle of the room, pressing the fingers of one hand into her temples, while eating listlessly with the other.

“Hey,” she says, “you needed to speak to me?”

Ida winces: Sigrun’s grasp on the idea of an indoor voice is tentative at best. 

“There’s something to the east of us. It’s big, and old, and really _fucking_ scary.” she responds, tersely. Sigrun frowns. That doesn’t sound like a troll.

“What kind of something? Should I get together a hunting party to go get it?”

“No clue. But it hurts to be near-fuck, it hurts to think about. I bet every mage in town can feel this thing. I can hear it, I think, and it’s... curious? I don’t know what it’s doing or where it’s going but it’s like this, this pressure behind my eyes. If you go out there to fight it, I don’t think you’d win.”

Sigrun can see a vein pulsing in her forehead as she speaks. Ida speaks again, voice increasingly strained.

“I can’t imagine what it is. I mean I _can’tdefinitely_ somehow call down a demon on his head while he was there.

“That settles it, then.” she says to Ida, who doesn’t even have the energy left to look confused. Sigrun thanks her and leaves, heading for the docks.

____________________________________________________________________________

“Hello?”

The voice that emits from the terminal is soft and scratchy.

“It hurts. It’s dark.”

“Ah. Well, I’ve been sent to help you. Can you tell me what you see?”

“It hurts. It hurts so much. It’s all black in here, and it stinks. I can’t see. Where am I?” The voice is beginning to take on a panicked tone, pitching higher every second.

He gulps.

“I can make it hurt less. Can you just help me a bit first? Can you tell me your name?”

“I’m called Andreas. Are you a doctor? I need a doctor. How will you make it hurt less?”

He feels a stab of guilt for waking it-him-up.

“Yes, I’m..I’m a doctor. But to let me help you, you have to tell me a few things. Do you have any parents?”

“Yeah. I don’t know where they are. I don’t need them, though. I’m pretty big, you know. I’m too big to be stuck in here. It’s all squishy, and I can’t move. I can’t breathe. Help me, please.” The voice is taking on a rasping quality, and he can hear an edge to it.

“I...fuck, I can’t do this.” he shuts off the terminal and throws it at a wall. It vanishes from midair with a pop as the ship’s trapdoor systems catch it.

Kasitendra is in what passes for the bridge of the ship, an open space devoid of any controls (for what use are those when the ship pilots itself?) and dotted with seating. Truly, it’s more of a lounge than anything else. It’s devoid of any crew at this time of day. HeLeyn’s asleep in their cabin, and Jand’s trying to train a clone of her pet spider. The transparent far wall gives a rather beautiful view of the Earth. It’s a pleasant enough place to be, and normally what there was of the crew would all be up here. It’s not hard to guess, mind you, why they aren’t here right now. It probably has something to do with the horror suspended in the centre of the room.

Kasi has a rather different conception of what looks healthy and pleasant to a human, but even to Idiran senses, the thing hovering in midair is nothing short of horrifying. It looks like an overgrown insectoid hunter-killer, formed from maybe a dozen people. Limbs twitch slightly, restrained by the ship’s fields, and the whole mass squirms subtly. He looks up at its flank, where the other end of the terminal he threw is plugged in, embedded in its flesh. It’s that device that takes the thoughts of the unfortunate souls trapped within and lets them speak to him, and vice versa. He’s been interviewing them all, one by one, trying to ease their pain. But that last one was a _child_ , for grief’s sake. He reaches up to the horror and pulls the transceiver out.

“You can put it back to sleep now.” he calls to the empty air.

The twitchings of the form cease.

“You don’t have to do this, you know. I already have everything I need.”

The ship’s avatar enters the bridge. It, too, looks like something insectoid, but where the abomination makes every movement as if in incredible pain, the avatar moves elegantly, even beautifully. It’s a construction of spun silver and glass, glittering in the soft lighting of the bridge. It looks like it should disintegrate at even the lightest touch- a deceptive image, Kasi knows.

It gestures to the creature.

“You know, there physically isn’t enough nervous matter in there to contain all those people. It makes no sense for them to still be conscious. I believe the Dra’Azon is keeping them there, one way or another.”

Kasi has trouble keeping his face impassive in response to that one. The Sublimed have ever been enigmatic, but this kind of cruelty isn’t regular even by their standards.

“Why can’t we just go down there and fix it all?” he asks bitterly. It’s the eternal question, fundamental to everything Contact does. They could quite easily go down to every suffering primitive world filled with war and strife and clean it all up. But they don’t. Kasi knows the reasons, he’s heard all the old arguments: they had to preserve the diversity of life across the galaxy, they couldn’t very well go around with imperial ambition “correcting” every society that defied their ideals, it would make them no different from the lords of old Idir. But in the moment, that’s all they feel like-excuses. This is the first time he’s been presented so starkly with the horrors of worlds that still know the bane of scarcity. In the face of all this suffering, that reasoning seems awfully flimsy.

“In general? I can’t help you with that. But here, on this world? The question has an easy answer. There’s a minor deity in orbit, watching over all of us. Regular communications technology simply breaks down planetside. You know, there’s spots on that planet I can’t even see? One’s moving, approaching Dizzy as we speak.”

“Shouldn’t you, you know, warn her about that?” he asks, a little alarmed.

“I did, of course. She’s aware, and she’s got a knife missile with her. She’ll be fine. Back to the point. I can’t just go down there and sweep all the evil away. Maybe with the help of the _Name_ -”

(that, Kasi remembers, is the GSV that parked up near the Oort cloud a few weeks back.)

“-but even then I’d be gambling all our lives. I can’t end this that easily.”

Kasi senses an implication there, something unsaid.

“...But?” he asks.

“But. There are _billions_ of them down there. And I am not willing to just stand by and let this be. I joined Contact so I could stop looking on at these things and start doing something about them.”

The question, then, is-

“How? How do we free them?”

The ship responds with what sounds to an Idiran rather like a chuckle.

“What did we ever do, in days gone, when faced with something beyond our control? How do we steel ourselves to face ultimate adversity?”

Kasi thinks he sees what the ship’s getting at. Its avatar stares out the transparent wall towards the world below. 

“We prayed.”

“Yes. And this time, we _know_ there’s something out there listening.”

____________________________________________________________________________

It feels something new. 

This is an anomaly. In all its existence, it has never felt anything more than dispassionate, cold in the execution of its duty. It has kin-all across this world, maybe a dozen altogether-but they, too, are not creatures of change. The one to the east, from the land of the lakes, is ever consumed by hatred for one bloodline of mankind. Those to the far south find themselves childish amusement in their prey. The lords of the distant west carry out their actions out of a sense of duty. They are eternal, and incapable of evolution. They have already been perfected, by the same blight that ravaged the old societies of humanity. There is no further for them to come. Call it-oh, call it what you would. Call it sorcerer, or demon, or god. Call it kade. Its kind have seen everything, know everything.

But something new has come into the world. Bearing alien knowledge and strange thought, borne on strange fires, three strangers from the skies. This is unexpected. It does not know what they are, but it wishes to find out. It feels curious. This is new.

It turns its gaze to where the last inhabitants of this land still cling on to life, and heads north.


	8. Foreboding

The atmosphere in the outpost is cut-glass sharp. It’s inescapable. Every conversation, every gesture, every place seems infested with a sort of quiet panic. He can’t pin down what it is that they’re all so afraid of, or even if there is anything in the first place. Nobody seems to know, nobody can describe what it is in the air they unconsciously recoil from, but it’s undeniable. It’s in their tight smiles, in their hesitant words, in the way they flinch at noises in the night. It’s in him too. Reynir can’t possibly explain why, but some nameless deep-down part of his brain is begging him to _leave_ , or to fight or to do anything except sit there, waiting for that doom he knows is coming in his gut. The very marrow of his bones seems to cry out against his presence here. He spends nights awake, looking up into the dusty cobwebbed ceilings, imagining he can see beyond to the night sky, not to the stars but rather to the unending blackness beyond them. He wills himself not to dream, worried what might be coming for him there, and what he does dream of is not the mages’ dream they all share. He sees broken glass, and an endless black ocean, and he knows surely that if he ever looks down into those depths he will be dragged into them.

It’s not a good idea in any circumstances to ignore a mage’s instincts, especially not when they tell of incoming ruin. The whole base is on whatever comes next after maximum alert-a whole cadre’s worth of bad omens is serious Bad News. Whatever’s going to happen next, he’s certain it centres here, on this outpost. Although they’re rooming up in the outpost to get a feel for the military life, they’re free to move between there and the city below when they have free time to spare. People have been recalcitrant about leaving from the very start, unaccustomed to the immensity of Aurland, but the few that do venture out report that things feel fine down below. This place, though? This place feels _doomed_ , in every possible sense. The soldiers too are gripped by whatever is it that’s carving out a nest in all their hearts. They’re trained not to show it, but it’s clear in the way they hold themselves, in the pop-pop-crack of panicked shots at the hills in the early morning. 

They can’t just abandon the base; panicked mages just means something worth stopping at the root. If something awful is coming to Aurland, then it’s critical they’re there to meet it (or so say the generals, from behind layers of security). For a whole week, they exist like this, in a constant state of dread, expecting a disaster every hour. And for a week, it doesn’t come.

The educational sessions continue, reluctantly. Any plans to let the immune mages see live trolls are cut short, however. Tempting fate like that is surely a recipe for disaster. Normally, Reynir would be enthusiastic about every new thing he learnt, happy to know more about the workings of the world. All other emotion is smothered now by the fear, but he tries to muster some enthusiasm for what he’s learning anyway. It’s not a dull class in itself: something about a mage’s place in the cleansing process, wielding charms of flame against troll-riddled buildings. The outpost’s mage, a stocky black-haired woman who looks no younger than fifty, gives the lecture forlornly. 

It’s by their own choice that they’ve come here, at known world’s end, but now that they find themselves faced with this new and terrible danger they want nothing to do with the Silent World. They all gather in the mess hall in their free time, as far as one can get from the uninhabited lands to the south of the outpost. There’s still only about half a hundred metres between them and Gods-only-know-what, but the sense of security is invaluable. Reynir heads there himself as soon as he’s able. It’s maybe ten in the morning, and the sun’s climbing higher into the sky, only occasionally blotted out by a wisp of cloud. 

The hall isn’t actually a building, of course. This entire base was set up fairly hastily, and though security is exceptional, only the most important areas(that is to say, the armoury and barracks) are actually in any sense permanent. The mess is just an oversized marquee under which trainee mages and soldiers alike sit and eat. Reynir isn’t particularly hungry himself, so he heads over to a knot of people that’s formed at the edge (the _northern_ edge, he notes) of the mess.

At the centre of a circle of awed trainee mages stands Ida, the soldier that they met back at the docks when they first arrived. She’s telling them about her time aboard a sea-beast hunter in the navy:

“-and then I threw some grenades into its mouth and it blew up.”

It’s not a very dramatic rendition-Sigrun wouldn’t approve-but she’s met with an appropriate collection of gasps and exclamations. A few of the trainees try to look like they’re above it all, but he can see that same glitter of amazement in their eyes, despite their sour expressions. None of the people here except himself have ever actually been outside the bounds of the known world, he reminds himself. He doubts most of them have even seen a live troll.

Ida, on the other hand, looks like she knows what she’s talking about. To be honest, she can’t be that much older than Reynir himself, but she has an impressive collection of scars despite her apparent youth. She speaks about all the insane things she’s seen with a rather casual attitude, but there’s a seriousness to her beneath it.

Maria, another one of the mages, plump and eternally smiling, pipes up: “Have you ever fought an evil spirit before?” (“like the one that’s probably headed here” remains unspoken.)

She waves off the question like it’s nothing serious. “Oh, not me myself. I’m only really good for killing honest flesh and blood trolls, thank you very much. But our mages are the best, and we _have_ got the twenty of you as well. This is probably the safest place you could be.”

“Can you get our classes to cover more about evil-murder-spirit-fighting?” he asks, making his way into the circle, eager to ask some questions that actually matter. He has no idea what’s coming, but he does know that he’d rather be sure they’re ready for it than just wait and find out.

The soldier can’t help but laugh in response. “I don’t think so, sadly. Again, you’re probably going to have to ask one of my comrades that’s actually taking part in the whole training thing. I just work here.”

“Can you perform exorcisms?” he continues, not letting up.

She clearly doesn’t know what to make of that one. The other mages, though, begin to whisper among themselves.

“I don’t know,” she finally admits, “but I don’t think that’s really our job, no. What exactly are we exorcising? Do you mean those last rite things you do to troll bodies to make sure they find final rest?”

“What kind of protection staves do you have on this place?”

Ida is clearly getting a bit uncomfortable; what was supposed to be a lighthearted recollection has become something rather more serious. “You’d have to take that up with-” she pauses, frowning, and then continues “-no, actually we don’t. That one I’m sure of. There’s some staves of light to drive back trolls, and a few of fire to incinerate any that get close, but nothing spirit-related.”

Reynir smiles. This, finally, is something he knows how to deal with. This is quite literally his job.

“Let’s fix that then, shall we?”

____________________________________________________________________________

Okay, on second thought, maybe convincing the people in charge of the base that they needed to make all the mages go out beyond the fence to do mind numbing labour _wasn’t_ the best idea.

The immune mages are all south of the fence, digging out soil to form a circle around the base to protect against unwanted arrivals. They’re accompanied by a few soldiers, and more stand on the safe side of the fence (along with the non-immune), watching over them. Nothing’s showed up yet, and nothing’s likely to; the lands around Aurland have already been well cleansed of the horrors that once infested them. The circle is almost complete, and the sun is setting over hills, painting the scene a radiant orange. Shadows lengthen as the mages continue working, constructing a scaled-up version of the very same stave that Reynir himself used to ward off the spirits during his time in the Silent World. A couple of the mages give him dirty looks now and again, but most are just glad to be able to do something to alleviate their terror. This is by far preferable to simply sitting and waiting for the inevitable.

Kristen’s north of the fence with him. She doesn’t really seem to know many of the other mages that well and so she and he end up talking. They both wear too-tight breath masks, Norweigian make. No doubt it’s that mask that gives her voice that odd disconnected timbre.

“Are you ready?” she asks, with no apparent prompting. Reynir can’t even say he’s sure where she appeared from.

“Ready for what?”

“Oh, don’t be obstinate. You know full well what I mean. The whole brutal-murder-of-everyone-in-the-base thing. The _spirit_ that’s going to eat all your souls.”

Reynir can’t help but shudder a little at that. Nobody has put what they could be facing in such stark terms until now. “That seems a bit pessimistic. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I mean, Norweigians are known for their-”

“Their martial prowess, and so forth, yes. But I don’t know what it is out there that’s coming for us, and that means that it is capital-B Bad. None of us will want to be here when it arrives.”

“You don’t even know that it’s something that can _arrive_ ,” he returns, “It could be pretty much anything. I mean, mages panicking could mean any sort of disaster. It doesn’t have to be a threat to the base itself at all. It could just be that an infected rat’s about to sneak past our defenses and into the city’s water supply.”

“It could be, assuredly,” she muses, “but it’s not. It’s something very physical and it’s on its way and there will be much violence done when it arrives.” 

“Kris,” he hisses, rare but genuine anger now in his voice, “if you know something we don’t please tell us all. If you don’t, could you maybe not be quite so much of a downer? There is literally nothing worse for morale than someone who thinks they’re doomed. Trust me, I've been on the other side of this situation.”

She doesn’t respond, grinding one palm into her left eye idly. A capillary’s burst in the sclera, and he can see the blood like a slowly blooming flower. The eyes are, infamously, the gateway to the soul. That’s probably not good news. The slight widening of his eyes at the sight is apparently glaringly obvious to Kristen. “I’m fine,” she says.

“Why would you not be fine?” he responds, busy backing away a little, looking around for someone armed.

“I’m not possessed, Reynir, you can stop panicking.” She clicks her teeth at him in irritation. He stops moving back, but keeps his gaze conspicuously away from her eyes. “Look, it’s just a genuine bit of harmless internal bleeding, alright? If you really want to know, I just sneezed too hard. If I was being eaten from the inside out by some sort of soul parasite, don’t you think I’d be a little more proactive about the murder?”

Now that she puts it like that, it does seem a little absurd that he was worried. Evil blood-drinking types typically didn’t make small talk (even the fairly ominous brand Kristen had been) when they possessed people. He’s probably in the clear. Sometimes, paranoia really isn’t justified.

Reynir, and just about everyone else in the base, hear what happens next. A guard yells at the top of his lungs. He’s speaking in Norweigian, but Reynir is pretty sure he’s saying something to the effect of “Captain!”. For a single heart-stopping moment, his blood freezes in his vein, as he struggles to recall half-remembered combat principles last used half a year ago. Then he registers the direction from which the call came. North. He breathes a sigh of relief. That’s the direction of Aurland, and nothing truly dangerous can possibly have come from the city. If it has, they’ve already failed. They all relax as they come to this realisation simultaneously. You can almost hear the sound of tension released.

Kristen looks over at him. “Whatever’s going on there is probably more interesting, and I doubt they have any real use for two nonimmune trainees out here. You gave them the plans for the circle already, and anyway pretty much any of the others know it too. We should take a little look.”

A quick check shows that the relatively few soldiers this side of the fence don’t really seem to care where they wander off too. “Fair enough, I guess.”

They arrive at the source of the noise, which turns out to just be the gate into the base. The called-for captain has not actually arrived yet. The soldier on duty, a tall broad man with a perpetually messy beard, is arguing with-

He realises, with a start, that the woman currently making mocking faces at the soldier on the other side of the gate is none other than his own Sigrun Eide. She recognises him as he approaches, too, saying something incomprehensible and Norweigian in response. Kristen seems to have trouble holding back a laugh at what she hears.

“What’s the issue here?” asks Reynir, eyebrow raised. Neither of them respond, looking at each other confusedly. Oh, right. Norweigians.

Kristen says something at them and they both respond, shouting over each other to be heard. The three of them continue to speak, while Reynir just sort of stands there, looking stupid. The last glimmers of light are vanishing from the sky to the west as they speak. Floodlights snap on around the base, enveloping it in a lurid white glow. They seem to come to a resolution, and Sigrun’s let in, although the soldier looks pretty grumpy about it.The first thing she does is say something incomprehensible at him and vigorously shake his hand. The next bit of foreign nonsense is directed at Kristen, who clearly understands such things. She sets off, and Sigrun follows her. Reynir does the same.

They return to where the mages are carving out the protection circle. The stark white light of the floodlights doesn’t make the outside world look much more appealing. Indeed, the shadows only seem to have lengthened, growing from tame shapes to vast umbral beasts that occupy half the landscape. The bleak white light only serves to highlight the depth of their darkness. He’d hate to have to fight something in a place like this. Kristen leads Sigrun to a man he recognises as in charge of the outpost. This time, happily, there doesn’t seem to be much need for arbitration. The two converse happily.

“What are they saying?” he asks Kristen under his breath.

“Sigrun’s saying that we’re all in grave danger, an evil spirit is coming for us, yada yada. She’s saying that, one captain to another, she recommends that he fetch reinforcements and prepare for a fight.”

“So, nothing we didn’t already know?”

“Not really, no. Oh, she’s also saying that whatever it is that’s coming, it’s slow. Apparently she felt it outside...Dalsnes? And immediately sailed here, to Aurland, to warn us.”

“How did she know it was coming here?”

“I don’t know, I’m not actually a mind-reader.”

The gates in the fence open, as half a dozen soldiers point their guns at each. The mages are ushered quickly through, soldiers on the other side following swiftly, guarding their rears. It takes about two minutes. The circle is complete; they left the work on the parts of it outside the safe area for last. Now that it’s done, the base is theoretically impregnable to supernatural attack.

He’s not sure if the circle is directly responsible or it’s just that he’s finally taking the initiative against what’s out there, but for the first time in a week he doesn’t feel afraid.

____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, it arrives.


End file.
